How deadline day panned out for Dons sporting director Sweeting and his team

Monday’s transfer deadline day was a busy one for MK Dons. With five players departing, and three coming into Scott Lindsey’s squad, things went right to the wire, and for the first time, beyond it.

The club secured the services of Travis Patterson (Aston Villa) and Danilo Orsi (Burton Albion) on loan, and signed keeper Connal Trueman from Millwall, while Matt Dennis, Tom Carroll and Joe Pritchard had their contracts cancelled, Ellis Harrison was loaned to Walsall and Tom McGill returned to parent club Brighton & Hove Albion.

Sporting director Liam Sweeting spoke to the Citizen to explain how the events of the day transpired.

“Travis was relatively straightforward and easy!” he said. “That was done early. He's highly-rated so we're excited for him.

“Tom had ​gone out of the team, so we were having conversations with Brighton about it, and they said they would have him back if that were to be the case longer term, but we were working together with that.

“And at the same time, Ellis expressed a strong desire to play more regularly. We hadn't completely ruled that out at MK Dons, but he was adamant he wanted it.

“For things to work out the way we wanted them to, we had a goalkeeper and a striker we were happy with, but if we were to facilitate their exits, we had to make sure we were improving our squad.

“To do that, we felt we needed a permanent goalkeeper to use Tom's loan spot to bring in a striker. We had a number of plates spinning. Connal we knew about, his Crawley spell was very impressive. There were a number of keepers in the market on deadline day, but to be a keeper to move permanently is quite a strong move. With clubs juggling their loan spots, there was a lot of competition for Connal. We were delighted to get in the mix with him, but our bid was only accepted at 8.30pm despite us chasing it for a few days. Then, a lot of other things had to fall in place in the next two-and-a-half hours.

“We had to get Danilo to Milton Keynes for a medical, because it's a loan. And then Ellis had to be connected to Walsall, and then we had to process Tom's paperwork to get him back to Brighton.”

He continued: “What we did in those two-and-a-half hours was incredibly challenging. We were able to get there, and ultimately I think by doing what we did, we got everyone where they needed to be.

“For the first time ever, we used the mechanism to get us the extra 15 minutes. Around about 11.30pm when we got confirmation from the EFL, that's when we could relax a bit. That's why all our announcements were so late, because we were all checking that it all got done in time.

“You could give us 33 years, not just 33 days, and we'd still be negotiating at the very end!”